Spector "More Scared" Over Next-Gen Than Excited

Warren Spector has intimated that he's a little bit scared of the next generation of consoles, if only because production costs may well prove astronomical.

Citing Nintendo, and the Wii in particular, as an example of design in games prevailing over big budget graphics, Spector said he was "a little worried" that "once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity", development costs may shoot over the $200 million mark, with a greater emphasis on landslide sales to earn that money back, something that only a small handful of studios will be able to achieve.

"Honestly? I don’t care much about hardware,” said Spector, talking to Digital Spy. “Nintendo games are some of the best games in the world and from a more graphical standpoint, the Wii can’t do what a PS3 or 360 can do. It’s about design and not so much about tech for me. Honestly, I’m more scared about what will come next than I am excited.

“Once we can do Pixar-quality graphics rendered in real time with interactivity, I could see games costing $200 million to make and all of a sudden you have to sell a lot of games just to break even, so I’m a little worried someone’s going to do that."

Then again, although worried about the steep resource requirements that might be ushered in with the next generation of hardware, Spector reckons he'll just keep on truckin'.

“Someone’s going to spend… well, there are already people spending $100 million on games, that’s not even insane anymore. $200, 300 million games, I’m a little scared about that, there aren’t a lot of companies that have the resources or the courage to spend that much. So my gut’s in a bit of a knot about that but whatever comes along I’ll just make games that work on that platform, I don’t think about hardware too much.”

Spector's Epic Mickey 2 is out this autumn for PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360, with a 3DS spin-off, subtitled Power of Illusion in the pipeline too.